Three Ways to Bear the World

Introduction to the Serial: The Death of Economics

In a world that moves ever faster yet feels increasingly empty, we invite you to pause, look back, gaze inward, and peer ahead.

The Serial: The Death of Economics is not merely a collection of critiques. It is an honest attempt to view economics from an angle rarely illuminated: from the side that is not always efficient, not always rational, but entirely human.

Here, we aim to refresh our memory of why economics exists—not just as a tool for calculation, but as a mirror reflecting the joys, achievements, sufferings, inequalities, and hopes of our era.

There is a small alley that you will not find on any map. It exists only in the place where economics ceases to be numbers and begins to be life. In that alley, there are three houses standing side by side. Their fences are different, their aromas different, and their sounds different at night.

But all three face the same sky, a sky that every morning poses the same question to each inhabitant: Not who is rich, not who is clever, not who works the hardest.

But who, in the end, bears the burden so that the wheel keeps turning, so that the weak do not sink, so that the gap between those above and those below does not become an abyss that swallows everything.

That question has existed since humans first decided to live together in one village, one city, one nation. And to this day, after all theories, all revolutions, all constitutions, it remains unanswered perfectly.

In the first house lives Pak Dieter, a German man. In the second house lives Mr. Chad, an American. In the third house lives Pak Budi. He, well, we all know where he comes from.

All three live in the same era, facing the same world. But the way they answer that question turns out to be very different. And that difference is not merely about fiscal policy or monetary regimes. It is about different histories. About different wounds. About what is willing, and unwilling, to be borne together.

Let us knock on their doors one by one. But prepare yourself: in each house, there is a truth that is pleasing and an irony that is painful. Because that is how economics is. It never comes without its shadow.

PAK DIETER: ORDERLY, BUT EMPTY

Pak Dieter’s house is the easiest to recognise in that alley. Its fence is straight. Its paint does not peel. Its plants are trimmed on the same day every week, and schedules are something that in this house are never violated.

Inside, everything is in its place. Bills are paid before due, pensions calculated since the age of thirty. Health insurance, life insurance, dental insurance—everything is there.

Pak Dieter works as an engineer at a manufacturing company that was established before he was born and will likely still stand after he is gone. His salary is good. His taxes are high—nearly 45 percent of his income transfers hands every month to the state. And what surprises many who hear this figure from outside: he is not angry, never angry, because he knows where that money goes.

He sees it in the trains that are always on time, even in winter when snow falls heavily. He sees it in the hospital that never asks about his wallet when he entered two years ago with a sore knee. He sees it in his child’s school, a public school whose quality is no less than any private one, because here there is no reason to distinguish between them.

Redistribution in Pak Dieter’s house is a contract, not pity, not charity. Not a campaign promise lost after the election. It is a written agreement between citizens and the state—I pay, you protect—that has been in place so long that no one questions it anymore.

Inflation? Low, stable. Boring in the most pleasant sense. Currency? Strong and reliable. The euro in Pak Dieter’s wallet today is worth not much different from the euro in his wallet ten years ago.

Inequality? It exists, but it is managed. The rich remain rich, but the poor do not fall too deep because there is a real safety net, one that can be grasped, that does not suddenly tear when most needed.

On paper, Pak Dieter’s house is the one that has most successfully answered that question. Who bears it? Everyone bears it. Transparently, proportionately, civilly.

But then night falls. And at night, there is something different in Pak Dieter’s house. Not commotion—quite the opposite, silence. Pak Dieter sits in the same chair every night. Reads a good book. Drinks the right tea. Everything is fine, and that is the problem. Every day, without exception, without surprise. Without moments where he must struggle for something uncertain to succeed.

He remembers a conversation with his father, twenty years ago, a man who grew up in the post-war era, when Germany was still in ruins and every day was a real struggle. His father told stories of what it felt like to rebuild from zero. Of the indescribable pride when he could feed his family with hands that did not give up even as the world crumbled.

Pak Dieter listened. But he could not feel it. Because he never experienced it. He never had to struggle that way. The system had ensured he did not need to. And that system, which should be a civilisational achievement, unconsciously also strips something deep from him.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher born in Pak Dieter’s homeland, once wrote about what he called Der letzte Mensch, the last man. The man who has achieved the highest comfort and therefore lost the will to achieve anything more.